KARACHI, Sept 19: A powerful explosion damaged the offices at 10th floor of a multi-storey building on the Sharea Faisal on Friday night. However, no casualty was reported.
The Kawish Crown Plaza was made target for second time in the last two months, as earlier, on July 11, a bomb had went off at the main entrance of the building, killing a security guard and an unidentified man.
Sindh police chief said that the incident appeared to be an outcome of some internal rift in the ranks of management of the building.
Friday’s blast took place around 8:25pm in a vacant office, where the wiring work and repair was being carried out.
The blast was so powerful that it smashed the windowpanes of several floors of the building. The doors of other offices on the floor were blown up due to the impact of the blast, which badly damaged furniture of several offices situated on the same floor.
The sound of the blast was heard far away and a traffic foul-up was witnessed soon after the blast. A car (AAB-543) parked outside the building was also partially damaged.
Tariq, an elevator operator said that he was operating the elevator and there were some people climbing down to the ground floor when a bang suspended their hearing for some moment. The elevator also stopped on the sixth floor and the people in the elevator did not know what happened exactly. He said after some time some people opened the door of the elevator and rescued the inmates.
A security guard, Gulzar, said that he was at the main entrance when the blast took place and the windowpanes showered on the service road and on the Sharea Faisal, resulting in a traffic mess.
“We went inside the building to know what happened. Later we came to know that it was a bomb explosion on the 10th floor”, he added.
The police rushed to the spot and controlled the traffic flow on one of the busiest artery on peak hours.
High ranking police officials and intelligence agencies alsoreached the spot to inspect the situation.
Talking to reporters on the spot, Sindh police Inspector General Syed Kamal Shah said: “There are four arguments which suggest that it was something internal. First, the building was made target for the second time. Second, the office where blast took place belonged to the building’s management, third one was that the blast also caused damage to the crown of the building, and the final argument was that the blast did not aim at causing harm to life.”
He said this was the message delivered to the management of the building, which suggested that it was a result of some internal rift between the management and their rivals.
About the intensity of the blast, he said the teams were examining the remains of the explosive to ascertain the type and weight of the bomb. The type of explosive would inform whether there was any similarity between the devices used in the present blast and the previous one, he said.
The sources said that it was a timer device fixed in the vacant office. Security guards and the elevator operators were interrogated but they failed to identify any stranger visiting the 10th floor.
They said that there was a rift between the owners of the building, as more than one person claimed the ownership of the building. The claimants were influential and trying to get the ownership of the building, the sources added.
The owner of the Kawish Crown Plaza was described as Ahmed Jamal in the KBCA records, the sources in the authority said.
The building plan comprising ground floor plus 10 floors was approved, but the owner had violated the rules by covering open space and excess area. A request for regularization of the plan was being processed, the KBCA sources added.
